Research Group

Mortality Inequalities

At a Glance Projects Publications Team

Project

Population Composition as a Driver of Mortality Trends and Inequalities

Alyson van Raalte, Josephine Jackisch; in Collaboration with Pekka Martikainen (MPIDR), Yana Vierboom (Princeton University, USA), Collin Payne (Australian National University, Canberra, Australia), Tianyu Shen (Vienna Institute of Demography, Austria), Wen Su, Jennifer Dowd (both: University of Oxford, United Kingdom), Eugenio Paglino (University of Helsinki, Finland)

Detailed Description

Populations change. Social norms change. Debilitating early-onset diseases are becoming treatable. Life courses are becoming more diverse. These changes happen not only across generations, but also within birth cohorts. Thus, the composition of a population observed at older ages varies in important mortality-relevant personal characteristics compared to when it is observed at younger ages. These compositional changes in sociodemographic characteristics differ in strength over time, vary across and within socioeconomic groups, and muddle our classic interpretations of trends in mortality inequalities.

Even if we have become better at assessing the causal role of individual characteristics on mortality differentials, we still struggle at even the most descriptive level to quantify the extent to which selection and social change, which are patterned across and within birth cohorts, relate to trends in mortality inequalities. In this project, we test the following two hypotheses: (1) that selection into socioeconomic groups based on health and childhood social circumstances is strengthening over time and is associated with strengthening social mortality gradients; and (2) that within-cohort compositional change is a driving force behind changing age patterns of mortality inequalities.

To test these hypotheses, we use highly granular population register data and panel surveys combined with methods from demography, life course epidemiology, and data science.

Publications

Shen, T.; van Raalte, A. A.; Payne, C. F.:

Changing educational attainment as a driver of cohort changes in healthy longevity: a decomposition analysis of US birth cohorts

American Journal of Epidemiology 195:5, 1222–1230. (2026)    

Moretti, M.; Korhonen, K.; van Raalte, A. A.; Riffe, T.; Martikainen, P.:

Evolution of widowhood lifespan and its gender and educational inequalities in Finland over three decades

SocArXiv papers. unpublished. (2025)    

van Raalte, A. A.; Vierboom, Y. C.; Martikainen, P.:

Revisiting within-cohort compositional change to understand mortality inequalities

Vienna Yearbook of Population Research 23, 1–15. (2025)    

Su, W.; van Raalte, A. A.; Aburto, J. M.; Canudas-Romo, V.:

Subnational contribution to life expectancy and life span variation changes: evidence from the United States

Demographic Research 50:22, 583–624. (2024)